Very Frustrated

On my desktop today, whenever I use the camera controls, it over-exagerates my mouse movements. For example, when I zoom out just a little, it zooms way out. Move the X-Axis, moves way to the right or left. Use the camera trackball, it whips around frantically almost like Flyaround Mode. HELP! I need to use the desktop to do anything of real complexity because on my laptop, Bryce just can't handle the complexity and crashes. It is also leaving gaps in my collapsed images. Kinda nice for a destroyed look but not what I am aiming for with these particular model pieces.

Both issues are very frustrating. Below is an example of the broken wall. I can't really show you an image on the desktop of the camera control issue.

it's an i7 4770k with 16GB RAM, SSD for Windows 8 Pro 64 and 3TB Seagate SATA III for storage. Bryce 7.1 Pro for Windows 64x. No other programs running. It's not attached to anything as even in default the camera acts the same way. The only change I made recently was to increase icon size on desktop as the desktop is attached to a 42" LCD Sony TV.

1) Please select all the rocks in your wall and group them, if you haven't already.

Then Edit [A]ttributes... on this group

Under the General Tab, what are the bottommost 3 numbers? How big is this group?

2) As Bullit implies above, are you in Camera or Director view? Director view has 3 other modes of navigation that can be really disconcerting if you're not used to them.

If you're in Director view, click the reveal triangle to the right of the big Rotation ball and select either tripod, or my personal favorite, Center to selection. If you're on Trackball, and your model isn't at world center, good luck to you :/

Oh yes: I don't know what you mean by 'collapsed' shapes, but if you mean Combined shapes... My advice is not to use the Combine tool. It's crap, not undo-able, and buggy. Better to build complex models in a different application and bring them into Bryce.

Yeah, I am starting to see that. On top of it, it seems to take more memory and cause way more crashes. The problem with the camera tool was directly related to the Windows change in icon size. DAZ Studio and Hexagon had no issues, just Bryce wigged out. Not sure if there is a way around that or not.

I got around the missing items by rebuilding the wall and not converting them to mesh. I'm not really too familiar with hexagon yet, but I assume it would be a much better tool to use for my combines. The tutorials on Hexagon seem to be really good, so I'll have to dive into them next. I assume I create my object in Hexagon, export it and import it into Bryce.

Correct. There are all kinds of model building apps out there: you can choose whatever works for you: from old-school mesh editors like Wings 3D, through to medium range modellers like Hexagon and Sculptris, up to the heavyweights like Maya, Blender, ZBrush and several others, modellers come in from free to bank-robbingly expensive.

Also keep in mind Bryce keeps things in memory, and doesn't flush them until you restart Bryce. So the more things you use the more memory you fill until Bryce bites the bullet. It's a good idea to built something, save it as Save As with the number 1 after the first file name, and restart Bryce. Bryce will increment the numbers if you use them after the file name, so you'll have successive numbered files of your project.

On my desktop today, whenever I use the camera controls, it over-exagerates my mouse movements. For example, when I zoom out just a little, it zooms way out. Move the X-Axis, moves way to the right or left. Use the camera trackball, it whips around frantically almost like Flyaround Mode. HELP! I need to use the desktop to do anything of real complexity because on my laptop, Bryce just can't handle the complexity and crashes. It is also leaving gaps in my collapsed images. Kinda nice for a destroyed look but not what I am aiming for with these particular model pieces.

Both issues are very frustrating. Below is an example of the broken wall. I can't really show you an image on the desktop of the camera control issue.

An interesting thing about Bryce is it give you a number of ways to go about the same things like when you select things their are lines with points you can pull to manipulate the object selected (which by your description sounds like how you've been doing things) or you can click where it says edit between create and Sky & Fog near the top of the Bryce screen, this gives you the controls shown in the pictured which give you much more controlled manipulation then the other way of "pulling points".